Royal, also sometimes called Temple orange is a nice orange mandarin cross, strong tree, high yield. Taste is more orange than mandarin. Have you considered any of the burgundy oranges?

Thanks Softmentor for your reply. Sorry, I wasn't able to respond to your post sooner. I have heard of Temple Orange, but know very little of it. It's good to hear that it's more orange than mandarin. I really do prefer the orange kind where I can get juice out of than the mandarin. I saw Lowe's carrying some Temple orange last week. Maybe I'll go back there to get one. By the way, what's burgundy oranges?

My daughter is into sprouting seeds out of anything she fancies. We've got different seedlings of some citrus fruit. Do you think they will grow to have similar fruit quality from the fruit we got the seeds out of?

Have you considered blood oranges. They are really a variant of the common sweet orange Citrus sinensis and are as robust as the common variety but the fruit has gorgeous hues of red. Secondly,although they are not oranges (or even true citrus), I can highly recommend growing kumquats. What's so great about them?--highly disease & pest resistant (compared to true citrus), cold tolerance, prolific fruiting, dwarf size (easily containerized), plus you get to eat their sweet skin. Good luck with your growing orchard!

Page mandarin, also called Page orange, is one of the best for both eating and juice. I rate it number 1 of my citrus.

njoasis, I didn't see your post until today as I don't always come here. I've been sourcing out a blood orange here locally, but haven't had any luck yet. Recently, I acquired a Red Navel Orange. I hope it will have nice red juice like the blood orange. Yes, I agree kumquats are very good as I have two kinds--Meiwah kumquat and the variegated version. They are now growing in pots which is the nice part as I'm growing out of space already! Thanks so much for helping out. I hope you're enjoying your gardening too.

Tolumnia, I bought a Page orange recently from Lowe's. After learning that it was a mandarin, I returned it to them. It was a handsome plant ... I should have read your comments before returning it. So, what you're saying is, it is an orange? You don't always get what you want at the big box stores, but sometimes they do carry nice stuff. Maybe I'll look for it again next time when I'm there. They often have sale on their plants too. Thanks so much for the recommendation.

The Page is a cross between a Minneola Tangelo and a Clementine and is a bigger in size than the average mandarin. Just about anyone I know that has one says it is the best tasting citrus they have and has been know to be the best overall tasting citrus in taste test after taste test. I think it is sometimes called an orange because it is generally larger than the average mandarin/tangelo (or whatever it is catagorized as). You may want to pick one up just for eating out of hand purposes (yet I would guess they would be good to juice as well).

I know someone already mentioned blood oranges but what about a Cara Cara navel? It is a dark pink/red fleshed navel (similar in color to a ruby red grapefruit) due to the presence of lycopene (which I believe is suppose to be good for you somehow...). If you are looking for blood oranges I hear the Tarocco is the best tasting and the Moro has the most consistantly red/purple flesh.

Something else to take into consideration when picking out citrus varieties is when the fruit ripens. If you only have a few spring ripening varieties you might want to pick up a tree that ripens in the fall and one that ripens in the summer so you have ripe fruit for 6 months out of the year. This link from Four Winds Growers might help a little: http://www.fourwindsgrowers.com/solver/varietyinfo.html
You may also want to check out the UCRs website for ripening times as well (listed below).

Finally, have you ever checked out the University of California Riverside's citrus variety webpage? There are pretty good profiles for a number of different citrus varieties. http://www.citrusvariety.ucr.edu/citrus/index.html
Check out the UCRs site as it may just help you make your decision on which oranges to go with.

Just some thoughts, hope they help!
Joe